If you’re a designer, photographer, artist, or any other creative professional, you realize the importance of having a beautiful portfolio site. When you display your projects in an organized and attractive way, you are more likely to attract clients or get a job at the company of your dreams.

Anyone who visits your site can see the full range of your creative skills as well as your artistic ability. Because of this, your website needs to have a strong focus on your work.

Thankfully, WordPress doesn’t fall short when it comes to portfolio themes. However, sometimes traditional website portfolio designs aren’t enough. In such cases, opting for a full-screen theme is the best choice.

Full-screen themes feature large images that take up the whole width of the screen or galleries that span from edge to edge of a browser window. Often, they make use of different effects such as zoom on hover or Ken-Burns to make your works even more attractive. They also support content from external sources like YouTube and Vimeo so you can even use videos to showcase your creative talents.

Best Full-Screen WordPress Themes (2017)

In today’s post, we’re featuring the best full-screen WordPress themes available on the ThemeForest market. Browse through these trending 2017 designs to take advantage of full-page image and video websites to make your portfolio site more remarkable.

The first full-page theme design on our list is Darkroom. It’s a great choice for photographers as it has a full-screen homepage with a beautiful slideshow, perfect for showcasing your photos.

This theme can also be set to display videos and it’s WooCommerce-ready—meaning you can even set up a shop to sell your prints. It’s fully responsive, SEO-optimized and includes the ability to password protect your portfolio pages.

The Photoreactive full-page WP theme comes with some powerful features designed to make your portfolio stand out. You can make use of different types of galleries, Ken Burns effects, integrate slideshows, and much more.

On top of being compatible with WooCommerce, the theme includes a shortcode generator allowing you to quickly add tabs, checklists, contact forms, accordions, and much more. You can also customize every aspect of your website design through the theme options panel.

The ePix theme is another great choice for photographers but can be tailored to work for graphic designers, web designers, illustrators, and other creative types. It offers several homepage layouts, one of which is a stunning full-screen slideshow.

You can also create a login page for your clients, edit the theme’s skin, and easily create custom layouts thanks to Visual Composer integration. On top of that, it comes with the ability to set lazy load your images, meaning they will only appear once a user scrolls to the photo itself.

Consider the Konzept theme if you’d like a grid-based layout. The homepage presents your past projects in an organized fashion and is a great choice for web or graphic designers who need a modern twist on their portfolio presentations. The theme has also been optimized for SEO, looks great on any screen size, and has been completely updated for 2017.

If you’re looking for a full-page WordPress theme with a dark background, look no further than SmartScreen. Thanks to the dark color scheme, your photos stand out even more and the theme looks great on any device.

Of course, if you’re not a fan of the dark background, you can easily change it through the theme options panel. Some of the main features include:

Full-screen video background

Highly customizable

Unique full-screen slideshow for each post/page or portfolio items

Filterable and paged portfolio layout

Video background support

Custom sidebar for each page or post

Link, Audio, Video, and Quote post format types

Custom widgets

Google Maps widget

Get your fullscreen portfolio site launched quickly in 2017 with a feature-rich, premium WordPress theme, like SmartScreen.

Aside from creating stunning slideshows, you can easily incorporate video backgrounds with the ability to embed the videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

The customers who bought this theme praise the ease of use and customization options:

Hugely impressed with this theme. Beautiful out of the box, and seems easy to mod, not to mention the very thorough help via the forum. Well built, clearly thought out, a pleasure to work with and functions well across devices. One of the best I’ve worked with.

The SOHO theme for full-page WordPress website designs is a great choice for anyone who wants to present their work with both photos and videos. The theme supports full-screen slideshows as well as video backgrounds.

It includes an advanced version of the built-in GT3 page builder so you can easily customize the layout or create your own from scratch. Several gallery layouts are also available including a masonry portfolio, grid gallery, ribbon gallery, and more.

The Shoot theme for making modern, full-screen websites offers a number of different homepage layouts in both light and dark version as well as a few additional pre-made page templates. Your works will stand out from the competition thanks to beautiful animations.

You can create endless possibilities by changing navigation styles, backgrounds for each section with colors, images or patterns. On top of that, the theme comes with a sticky menu, meaning your visitors won’t have to scroll all the way to go to another page on your site.

Consider the Kose theme if you’d like complete control over the layout of your pages. Thanks to the integration with Visual Composer and a variety of page elements, you can easily insert tabs, accordions, toggles, and more. Additionally, this full-page website template includes several pre-made page templates so you can showcase your services, team members, contact page, and more.

The Showcase theme can be used not only for full-screen photography or portfolio websites but also for business websites that want to stand out from the competition.

Thanks to its unique scrolling effect, your visitors are sure to be impressed when they land on your site. Several demos are included as well as unique 3D animations, split screen slider layout, and unlimited layouts based on grid pattern.

JohnBlack is a premium WP theme built with photographers in mind. It comes with a number of different homepage layouts, which include a full-screen slideshow, striped homepage, split slider, and many more.

The theme design has been optimized to load fast and rank better in search engines, on top of being highly customizable. It also supports keyboard navigation and comes with a drag-and-drop page builder which makes it easy to customize any of the pre-made layouts.

The MAC theme features a grid-based homepage where each of the thumbnails leads to a striking full-screen individual photo.

This pro WP theme is perfect for photographers and coded with the best SEO optimization practices in mind for 2017. You can use custom shortcodes and drag-and-drop modules to control the layout of your pages.

Customers appreciate the ease of use and the simple beauty of the theme design:

What a fantastic photography theme. Simple and easy to use and looks spectacular. An amazing work of art that highlights photos perfectly.

Moriarty is a responsive photography WordPress theme with a stunning full-screen slider on the homepage to feature your latest or most popular photography works. You can also choose either Ribbon or Ken Burns slider to represent your photos. The theme features an eye-catching typography, pre-made layouts, and tons of customization options along with intuitive navigation and long scrolling form.

The Marseille WP theme is a simple website template design perfect for any creative professional who wants to create their portfolio without a lot of hassle. It includes several homepage layouts and supports video backgrounds.

You can easily import any of the pre-made demos with one-click and even integrate parallax backgrounds on your pages. It also includes the ability to showcase client testimonials and include calls to action on any of your pages.

The last theme on our list, SceneOne, is packed with features. This full-screen WordPress theme comes with 12 pre-made demos, 8 menu variations, multiple grid styles for your portfolio, and the ability to encourage your visitors to like your work.

You can create proof galleries and password protect them for client use as well as sync your Lightroom library with your website. On top of that, the theme is optimized for SEO in 2017 and integrates with some of the most popular plugins such as WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, and others.

5 Design Tips for Better Full-Screen Websites

Full-screen WordPress themes and websites are one of the best ways to present your portfolio, whether you’re showcasing full-page photography, video, or your design projects. However, with a little creativity, they can also be used for business websites. Here are a few important design tips to keep in mind when it comes to making full-screen websites:

1. Use High-Quality Images

Images will be the center point of your full-page website. Because of this, it’s important to use high-quality images scaled to the size that your WP theme specifies. But, do take care to optimize the images for the web and save them in appropriate format to avoid slowing down your site. You can also use the lazy load effect found in ePix to make your site load quicker.

2. Make Use of Hover Effects

When done right, hover effects can make your images stand out even more. Using the Ken Burns effect is especially popular with photography sites, however, you can also use an effect that zooms the image in on hover or a creative transition between two slides. WordPress Themes like Moriarty or PhotoReactive are a prime example of creative hover effects in use.

3. Keep Your Menu Simple

Keeping the menu simple is extremely important in full-screen websites. It allows visitors to focus on your work without seeing dozens of pages and feeling overwhelmed. Almost all of the themes on our list use a simple and hidden menu that appears only when a user hovers over the menu icon.

4. Consider Using a Sticky Menu

Another way to keep the focus on your images is to use a sticky menu. If you create a long-scrolling page, having a sticky menu is an unobtrusive way to keep the navigation always accessible and allows visitors to go to another page quickly. A theme like Shoot does an excellent job of integration a subtle sticky menu.

5. Experiment With Layouts

Finally, don’t be afraid to experiment with different grid layouts to get the most out of your theme. With all the possibilities, you can decide how many photos or portfolio pieces you want to show in a unique way, while still keeping your site organized and visually appealing.

Create a Full-Screen Portfolio With WordPress

Full-screen WordPress themes are a wonderful way to showcase your portfolio in a large-format, full-page style. If you want your website to stand out from the rest of the competition, browse through our collection of full-screen WP themes and get started building your portfolio that’s sure to impress your visitors.